CENCO® AP Physics Lab 2.16: Diffracting Light with Gratings

Explore the diffraction patterns from different gratings, then determine the width of a single hair.

Introducing the new CENCO AP Physics lab series!

Ideal for AP Physics 1 and 2, AP Physics C, IB DP Physics, and advanced/honors physics courses, each of the 35 experiments is aligned with the revised College Board AP curriculum. These innovative labs go way beyond traditional exercises, turning real to world scenarios into true guided to inquiry investigations. Students are given a goal, but the investigation is driven by their ideas. As they draw conclusions, students report their results using the Claim to Evidence to Reasoning model. The teacher guides and student manuals are authored and reviewed by AP Physics teachers with decades of combined experience, so you can trust the setups to be successful in your classroom. All labs come complete with instructions and materials for one lab group of 2 to 4 students. For your convenience, labs are packaged to allow you to purchase only what is required for each experiment.

Students build a thorough understanding of the factors affecting diffraction in this three-part inquiry-based investigation. In the first part, students use different diffraction gratings to determine the wavelength of a laser. In the second part, students investigate the spacing of lines on a compact disk (some students may remember what those are!). In the third experiment, students apply the principles of diffraction to determine the width of a hair. As always, they support their conclusions using the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning method.